DARK CITY a gripping detective mystery by CHRISTOPHER M. COLAVITO Page B

much Knox had to pay her to stay. She understood, because Detective Knox was not the man she had fallen in love with, nor the one she had married. That man, Dylan, was a different animal than the one she now found herself stuck with.
    They had met before Knox's bitterness had fully brewed, when the depths of his cynicism were still covered up by the honeyed taste of hope. Back then, she swore, he was a happy person who sometimes played the part of a misanthrope. Now she could only remember the shape of his smile, though she swore the man he once was still resided inside him. He loved her for this, because she was the only person in his life who could see anything in him other than the grizzled old cop who lived inside his memories.
    Their life together was not without its challenges, mostly due to Detective Knox's inability to decipher human feelings. For a man who spent his life putting clues together to form solutions, Kat was a puzzle he was unable to solve. As frustrating as it was for her to spend her life with a man who did not understand many of the basic tenets of her foundation, she had to admit a sense of pride in being the one mystery her husband had yet to solve. Perhaps, she sometimes thought, that was why he stayed with her. He simply couldn't leave a mystery unsolved.
    Detective Knox drank his scotch in oversized gulps, not worrying about the flavor of the cheap liquor, using it merely as a conduit to a different state of mind. Alcohol, he decided, was not an art that needed to be loved and savored with every sip and drop. To him, alcohol was a tool, so it didn't matter to him if he was drinking the finest example of distilling technology, or gussied-up paint thinner. As long as he got to the point where he could no longer remember who he was, or why he started drinking in the first place, he was happy, or at least as happy as he could ever be.
    Knox heard footsteps behind him, the muted sound of skin on wood. They were not the light approach of a covert operative gaining position without being detected. Kat was not afraid of him, even when he was in no mood to put up with any human, her included. She knew enough about him that the distraction of having to turn on the part of his brain required for caring enough about another person, even as an act, would help him escape the labyrinth of troubles he had trapped himself in.
    “I know you're there.”
    “I'm always here. You're the one who forgets to come home.”
    Knox expected the remark to come with that tone of voice he hated, the one that reminded him of his many failings as a man and husband. Instead, she spoke with the soft inflection of a nurse consoling a dying man before he stepped into the light. Whatever his faults, she refused to let him believe he had erased the memory of who he once was.
    “It's not that I forget, or that I don't want to be here. You know how I get. I become so focused on the problem that I can't sleep until I make some sort of progress, or at least come to the conclusion that there isn't an answer to be found. If I can't sleep, I might as well be at work trying to figure it out.”
    “You say that every time, and it's still not an excuse. Drinking yourself to sleep so you can deal with a problem doesn’t work. Why don't you try talking to someone instead?”
    “You're referring to yourself.”
    “It doesn't have to be me. I'd like to think you could talk to me, but I just want to make sure you're not going to have a nervous breakdown because you're trying to fix the whole world by yourself.”
    Knox put a hand to his knee as he rose, holding the joint in place, not wanting Kat to notice even a hint of weakness in him. He walked over and wrapped his thick hand around the bottle, throwing a wave of bitter ambrosia into the glass, crashing off the side before settling with the stillness of a crime scene. He turned to look at Kat, whose eyes had never left him. Guilt washed over him, and he rested the glass on the table.
    “I